/ from : Jos<::phinE: \!Jrigh.t, with Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. t ed ., Ne:,.; Pe[§..

~ctiy_es in
~Lls:c: Es::;ays in Honor of Fi l_een Southern (Warr-en NI: Harmoni•" Pad< Prec?s ,
l992> c~ Detcoit Monographs in ~1u:;;;i.cology/Studie,3 in tvlusi c , no . 11
I SBN (invalid) 0-89990-042 - 6

2
A Glimpse of the Lost Years:
Spanish Polyphonic Song, 1450-70

David Fa/lows

Spanish polyphonic song seems to begin with two manuscripts: the "Cancionero musical de la
Colombina" (CM C) at Seville, which contains ninety-five works, mostly copied around 1490; 1
and the slightly later but enormous "Cancionero musical de Palacio" (CMP) at Madrid. 2 Apart
from two fourteenth-century sacred pieces 3 the only earlier polyphony with vernacular text so
far found on the peninsula is the four-voice romance "Lealtat, o lealtat," dated 1466 and copied

An earlier version of this paper was read at the Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Music at Pembroke
College, Oxford, in July 1983. For subsequent help and observations I must thank Tess Knighton (London), Jeremy
Lawrance (Manchester), Richard Sherr (Northampton, Mass.), and Jane Whetnall (London).
1 Seville, Biblioteca Colombina, 7-1 -28 . There are three complete editions. That in Robert Clement Lawes, Jr.,
"The Seville Cancionero: Transcription and Commentary" (Ph.D. diss ., North Texas State College, 1960), was
apparently unknown to the two later editors, but in several cases offers better transcriptions and is the only one
of the three to attempt extensive consideration of the poetic sources. Gertraut Haberkamp, Die weltliche Voka/musik
in Spanien urn 1500 (Tutzing: H . Schneider, 1968), was at least acknowledged in Miguel Querol Gavalda's edition,
Cancionero musical de la Colombina (siglo XV), Monumentos de la musica espafiola (hereafter, MME), vol. 33
(Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Instituto Espafiol de Musicologia, 1971); but Querol's
evident anger at the competing edition (published when his own work was at an advanced stage of preparation)
seems to have led to his taking only intermittent note of her findings. For further bibliography, see the Census-
Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music, 1400-1550, compiled by the University of lllinois Musicological
Archives, Renaissance Manuscript Studies, vol. 1, no. 3 (Stuttgart: Hanssler-Verlag, for the American Institute of
Musicology, 1984): 142-43.
2 Madrid, Biblioteca de Palacio, 1335. Higinio Angles, ed., Cancionero musical de Palacio (sig/os XV-XVI), MME
5 (Barcelona, 1947) and MME 10 (Barcelona, 1951); the texts are edited with extensive literary commentary by Jose
Romeu Figueras in MME 14 (Barcelona, 1965).
3 See Gilbert Reaney, ed. Manuscripts of Polyphonic Music (c. 1320-1400), Repertoire International des Sources
Musicales, B IV 2 (Munich: Henle, 1969), 96, 101-03.
 20 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON EARLY MUSIC

into a chronicle now at Madrid. 4 But nobody would pretend that there was no polyphonic
song in fifteenth-century Spain. For sacred music there are similarly almost no surviving sources,
though Angles and Stevenson have given enough documentary evidence to leave little doubt
that sacred polyphony was cultivated extensively in Spain throughout the fifteenth century. 5
Two relatively early songs in non-Spanish sources help to outline the picture of what
happened in Spain before 1490. These are Cornago's ''Yerra con poco saber," in Trent
89, probably from around 1470, 6 and Vincenet's "La pena sin ser sabida" in the Mellon
Chansonnier, prepared in Naples apparently in about 1475. 7 But at this point the subject
becomes more difficult: the remaining chansonniers from the Aragonese kingdom of Naples,
though they contain a handful of Spanish works, are all difficult to date much earlier than
1490, the date of CMC. Moreover, the stylistic pattern offered by the three songs mentioned
so far is by no means coherent.
Yet the subject of Spanish song in the years 1450-70 is one of considerable importance.
The apparently earlier material in CMC and CMP includes some of the most wonderful songs
of the entire fifteenth century -one need mention only the three surviving songs of Johannes
Urrede to demonstrate that point. And the search for a context into which to fit these works
is a task of some urgency.
My aim here is not to provide that context. 8 It is rather to restore to view three Spanish
songs from before 1470 that have been overlooked or apparently misunderstood in the available
literature; to put them alongside the Madrid song of 1466, as well as certain other pieces that
show hints of being from the same generation; and to draw some tentative conclusions about
the early Spanish repertory.

La gracia de vos

Historians of Spanish music and of Spanish poetry have overlooked this song in the Chansonnier
Cordiforme of the 1470s, 9 with the single exception of Carolyn Lee's recent thesis. 10 It was

4 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 2092 (olim G. 126), ff. 249v-250 (see Ex. 2.5 of this paper for musical transcription).
For earlier editions and bibliography, see Census-Catalogue, vol. I, no. 2 (Stuttgart, 1982): 133-34.
5 See particularly Higinio Angles, ed., La musica en la carte de Ios reyes cat6licos, part I, MME I, (Barcelona, 1941
revised 2nd ed., 1960): 25-38; also Robert M. Stevenson, Spanish Music in the Age of Columbus (The Hague: M.
Nijhoff, 1960), especially p. 120.
6 Rebecca L. Gerber, ed., Johannes Cornago: Complete Works, Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle
Ages and Early Renaissance, 15 (Madison: A-R Editions, 1984), 56.
7 New Haven, Beinecke Library, Yale University, 91, ff. 57v-59 (no. 44); see Leeman L. Perkins and Howard Garey,
eds., The Mellon Chansonnier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 1:151-53.
8 I hope to attempt that in a larger study, tentatively entitled "Art Songs of the Burgundian Era, 1415-1480," which will
include in its second volume a full listing of the polyphonic song repertory from those years in all languages. My list of
Spanish repertory runs at present sixty-six items. This article is part of an attempt to clear some preliminary ground.
9 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale, Rothschild 2973, ff. !Ov-11 (no. 8), ed. Edward L. Kottick, The Unica in the
Chansonnier Cordiforme, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 42 ([n.p.], American Institute of Musicology, 1967), 3,
confusingly described, p. xii, as a ballata in the Italian style; for the date of the manuscript, see pp. ix-x. A full
edition of the manuscript is now in press with the Societe Fran~aise de Musicologie, entitled Le Chansonnier de
Jean de Montchenu, ed. G. Thibault and David Fallows.
IO Carolyn Ruby Lee, "Spanish Polyphonic Song c. 1460 to 1535" (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1981), I :12.
 Spanish Polyphonic Song 21

missed presumably because the text is heavily Italianized. A simple list of text incipits would not
be enough to alert other scholars to the presence of a Spanish song in this Savoyard chansonnier;
moreover, the song appears in a group of Italian pieces, all with textual corruptions of one
kind or another perpetrated by the apparently francophone scribe; and the presence of eight-
syllable lines, unusual in Italian poetry, was not in itself sufficient to define the song as Spanish
since the collection includes one other Italian song with this meter, cultivated by Italian poets
at the Aragonese court of Naples. Even so, there were enough specifically Spanish words
to suggest the song's origin. And the recent publication of indexes to Spanish fifteenth-century
poetry by Steunou and Knapp (1975-78), and particularly by Dutton (1982), has made the
access to the entire poetic repertory infinitely easier Y
"La gracia de vos donzella" appears in the so-called "Cancionero de Modena," and is
found complete within a glosa probably by Alonso de Basurto, "Allende de ser muy bella,"
itself known from two early manuscripts. 12 With these three creditable Spanish or
Neapolitan/ Aragonese sources, there can be no question about the origin and details of the
poem, which has precisely the form that is most often used among the earliest layers of CMC
and CMP, namely a canci6n with a four-line refrain, an eight-line verse, and eight-syllable
lines throughout.
· And it is now easy to see how the Cordiforme copyist misunderstood his poem. In Ex.
2.1, the text above the music attempts to reproduce what is in the Chansonnier Cordiforme,
whereas that below the line gives the more probable reading in the light of the newly relocated
text. Basically, the discantus and tenor have an extraordinarily simple contrapuntal relation-
ship, mostly in parallel 6ths, sometimes in parallel 3rds, and always cadencing together on
the octave. That can only mean that the four lines of the refrain have music fot four measures,
three measures, four measures (each cadencing on a homophonic paroxytone), and then an
entirely unexpected nine measures. This scheme, with the fourth line taking nearly as much
music as the first three put together, is, I now see, less rare in Spanish repertory than elsewhere;
and it is surely confirmed by the change away from simple parallel movement at measure
15, precisely the point where the texting gives way to melisma.
"La gracia de vos" may in fact be the earliest surviving Spanish song of the fifteenth
century. One source of the g/Osa, Madrid-, Reai Academlade la HfsiOna-;2-7 ~2~-ls currentiy
·dated ea. 1454. 13 That the poem should be so early does not necessarily say anything about
the date of the music, but further evidence that iil.s an-ea-rlysong comes from.· apoem ihat
seems to have been overlooked by music historians and has been incompletely understood
by literary historians.

11 Jacqueline Steunou and Lothar Knapp, Bibliograj(a de Ios cancioneros castellanos del siglo XV y repertorio de
sus generos poeticos (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1975-78); Brian Dutton, et al., eds., Catalogo-
indice de la poesia cancioneril del siglo XV (Madison: [Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies]. 1982). Dutton had
the immense advantage of being able to benefit from the Steunou-Knapp catalog, which was published at the point
when his was almost completed; the Dutton catalog is therefore better in almost every way , not least in its far wider
coverage of manuscripts and its greater ease of handling.
12 Modena. Biblioteca Estense, alpha. R.8.9, f. l57v; Alonso de Basurto's glosa "Allende der ser muy bel!a" appears
in Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, 2-7-2, f. 399; and Paris, Bibliotheque nationale, f. esp. 510, f. 189-89v. It
includes the entire original poem interspersed with new materiaL
13 See Dutton, 29. For discussion of the date, see Brian Dutton, "Spanish Fifteenth-Century cancioneros: A General
Survey to 1465," Kentucky Renaissance Quarterly 26 (1979): 445-60 (especially pp. 455-58). This brief article is
obviously of fundamental importance to the question of establishing an early Spanish song repertory. Dutton's date
for the Madrid manuscript supersedes that of ea. 1500 offered by Jose Romeu Figueras in MME 14:220.
Ex. 2.1. Anon., "La gracia de vos donzella."

La gra de voe doze la Honesta

1\ 5

~ ..., I . • -4- •

La gra cia de VOS don- ze-lla . Ho - nes-ta. gen - til. gar - ri- da,
!
1\ _L b !

Tenor ~ I .
V
1\

I . ... . X -4-
i -
Contratenor 8

guar ida My fa ce me -
,-----. I0
" I l I

..., . . . _,
~~
~

Mi fa : mem - brar d 'a quella Que fa ce pe nar mi

I
.fl I .l Ir ,-

f ........ I I

.-
1\ I b

8'
. I
X X
I
-
-
bra re de chela fa - ce penare me ve -da.
" 15 -
OQ

vi -
.
- -· ..,;· ... ......... V

da.

f
1\
---.'

~
- - ~~- 1
- - V

fl I

f
. ...... r
·--------· -·-:J; '

(\
_,
V

1\
Co- mo que l que non
-4-•

pen
.....
- se
.
b
Che1
i
l'a
- 'l "'" :,:_,,:
vess

11 I r . I V

fl I

8' "
. . X

* x·s indic.n c problematic passages in original source.

-#
X
-- •..__....• I I X
 Spanish Polyphonic Song 23

This is the poem "En Avila por la A," which cites a song incipit in each of its twenty-three
stanzas-. 14- The stanzas are organized alpha&eflcally. -Thus,-the first tellsliow-ilie--klng went to
Avlla, where his hosts were Alfonso and Antona; they ate avellanas (hazelnuts) and they sang
the song "Am or yo nunca pense," and so on. In the second stanza, the song is specified as
having been sung in three voices: 15

'Buena pascua y ventura'

a tres vozes cantaran

In the fourth stanza, it was J oh an de la Carra and his brother who sang: 16

Canten delante su alteza

Iohan de la Carra y su hermano
· ~'- 'Dama de gran gentileza'

And in the fifth stanza, at Estorga, the bishop and two others sang: 17
El obispo y otros dos
le canten quando comiere
~. 'En esto siento par Dios.'

Musical settings of these a~wn, though for two of them we do have the poems,
and they are in the norm~tCanci6n fo~f the Spanish polyphonic repertory in the fifteenth ·
century. ~
Two other songs actually belong to the French repertory and for that reason were not
identified by the literary historians who have examined the poem. At "Florencia" (presumably
Florence, though all the other places mentioned are in Spain or were at the time in Spanish
hands) they sang "Fortuna tort." 18 This is probably not the extraordinary French ballade
of that title found in three Italian manuscripts of the 1480s and, to judge from its style, hardly
likely to have been composed much earlier than that. 19 But that polyphonic song owes features
of its text to a monophonic French song that appears only in a manuscript from the early
sixteenth century but seems likely, along with much else in that source, to date back at least to

14 London, British Library, Add. 33382, ff. 195v-206, ed. Charles V. Aubrun, Le Chansonnier espagnol d'Herberay
des Essarts (XVe siec/e), Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Hispaniques, fasc. 25 (Bordeaux: Feret, 1951),
188-96.
15 Lines 35-36; Aubrun, Le Chansonnier espagnol, 189.
16 Lines 74-76; Aubrun, ibid. Aubrun notes, p. xxxiii, that a Beltnin de la Carra was a gentleman in the court
of Carlos, Prince of Viana (d. 1461). ', ·- - .
17 Lines 94-96; Aubrun, 190.
18 Line 115; ibid.
19 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale, f. fr. 15123, ff. 118v-20 (no. 101); Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 2356, ff. 36v-37
(no. 29); Montecassino, Biblioteca dell' Abbazia, 871, p. 371 (no. 95), ed. Isabel Pope and Masakata Kanazawa,
The Musical Manuscript Montecassino 871 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 378. It is unfortunate that the only
texted version of the song (that in f. fr. 15123) is both incomplete and seriously corrupt, copied by an Italian with
very little knowledge of French. The poem seems to be in four-syllable lines of a kind very rarely encountered in the
French polyphonic repertory. (In this I disagree with the reconstructed text in Pope and Kanazawa, 623 .) Predictably,
the music is also without parallel in the repertory of its time, not only in its short phrases and its elaborately conceived
lower voices but also in its heavy emphasis- particularly at the beginning of the secunda pars- on the two chords
g/g'/b'-flat, and d'lf'la' (the latter constantly changing texture as the three voices intertwine on its three notes).
 24 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON EARLY MUSIC

the middle years of the fifteenth century. 20 Later it was used for a basse danse in Moderne's
collection S'ensuyvent plusieurs basses dances (ea. 1530) and cited from there in Rabelais'
extraordinary list of songs in Le Cinquieme livre. This would seem to be the version referred
to in "En Avila por la A."
At Iaca the song was "le soy pobre de liesse," which, as "Je suy si povre de leesse," has
a history going back to the Namur version of the tenor copied around 1420, later turns up
as a basse danse in the Brussels manuscript, and is known from a polyphonic setting ascribed
(though with little probability) to Dufay. 21
Of the Spanish songs mentioned in this poem, the only ones from which we have music are-~
"Senora qual soy venido" (by Cornago) 22 and the subject o-f this note-;--nra gracia de vos
donzella." 23 But the pattern seems clear enough: all twenty-three poems cited are specifically !
described as having been sung, in three cases the surrounding comments indicate that they are I
sung polyphonically; two more are known from the French song repertory; and two are known l
from the Spanish polyphonic repertory. There seems a good case for believing that all twenty- !
three were being sung in Spain at the time, and that a fair proportion had polyphonic settings. -
Moreover, the poem's most recent editor, Ch~IJ~~Aubrun, offered an ·exteHded argument
for believing that the poem was written in about ~~~~ and certainly no later~is evidence
is mostly circumstantial, derived from the known biographies of personalities mentioned in
the poem; and such arguments are always open to revision or reconsideration. But this poem
/ seems nevertheless prime evidence for establishing a repertory of Spanish polyphOnicsong--fn
th~l4S0s. Th!itFrench pieces are there sh-ould surprise nobody. There areseverair efer ences
to the vogue for Machaut in the late fourteenth century; early in the fifteenth century the
Italian poet Prodenzani refers to a French song as being_§u,ng in Spain; 25 and the court of
~ -----
Navarre throughout these years maintained fl dual Franco-Iberian culture.~ 6 That Cornago's
~- - · ~ .... -·--·- --- -- ._- ---------·· ·- ·">. ··-- ·· -

20 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale, f. fr. 12744, f. 61 v (no. 92), ed. Gaston Paris with Auguste Gevaert, Chansons du XVe
siecle (Paris: Firrnin-Didot et Cie., 1875), 88, with music in the appendix (p. 51). A further text to the same melody,
with the same opening quatrain but subsequently turning into a reponse to the first in the words of a lady, appears
on f. 62 (no. 93), ed. Paris and Gevaert, 52; the latter poem appears in an extended form in some sixteenth-century
prints, ed. Brian Jeffery, Chanson Verse oj the Early Renaissance (London: Tecla Editions, 1971-76), 1:142.
21 Line 176; ed. Aubrun, 190. The polyphonic setting is edited in Heinrich Besseler, Gui//elmi Dujay opera omnia,
tomus 1: Motetti, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, ser. 1 (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1951-66), 1:101 -02.
Full sources (but without reference to the Spanish poem) are itemized in Frederick Crane, Materials for the Study
of the Fifteenth Century Basse Danse, Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen/Musicological Studies, 16 (Brooklyn: Institute
of Mediaeval Music, 1968), 79-80.
@ ine 356; ed. Aubrun, 194. The music appears in CMC and CMP, but is edited most recently in Gerber, Johannes
Cornago, 72. In both sources the three-voice song has an extremely florid contratenor that is entirely foreign to
what is otherwise known of Cornago's style; and in CMC, while an ascription to Cornago appears on the left-hand
page above the discantus and tenor, the name "Triana" is on the right-hand page above the contratenor. It must
be assumed, then, that the contratenor is Triana's later addition, though Gerber suggests in her commentary (p.
xiii) that Triana may also have been responsible for the sacred contrajactum text "Infante nos es nascido," which
appears lower down on the same page.
@ Line 214; ed . Aubrun, 192.
24 A u b run, xXXJ-XXXYI.
/;::'\ . .
~ Simone Prodenzani of Orvieto, /1 Saporetto (ea. 1410), ed. Santorre Debenedetti, /1 "So/lazzo" e i1 "Saporetto"
con altre rime di Simone Prudenzani d' Orvieto, published as part of a series of monographs Giorna/e storico del/a
letteratura ita/ion, Supplemento 15 (Turin, 1913), where there is reference (ed. Debenedetti, 109) to a song described
as "Tres belles dames de Spagnia." This passage also appears in Santorre Debenedetti, It "Sollazzo": contributi alia
storia del/a novella, del/a poesia musica/e e del costume ne/ trecento (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1922), 173. It is in the
latter study that Debenedetti establishes the preferred spelling "Prodenzani."
26 Higinio Angles, Historia de la mtisica medieval en Navarra ([Pamplona]: Diputacion Fora! de Navarra, Institucion
Prfncipe de Viana, 1970), passim.
 Spanish Polyphonic Song 25

- "Senora qual soy venido" may have been composed so early fits in well with recent evidence
that he was already a mature composer by 1453 . 27 The song is known only in a version with
a much later contratenor apparently added by Triana; but there is no difficulty in believing /
that Cornago's two original voices go back to the 1450s. 28 And that in its turn fits comfortingly
with the knowledge that the poem is by the Marques de Santillana, who died in 1458. In
fact, as the picture of early Spanish song and its literary sources emerges, it begins to look c::.-
as though most settings were made very soon after the creation of the texts- a pattern also
found in the French repertory of the time.
I mentioned the unusually syllabic and homophonic style of "La gracia de vos," which leads
to fluid declamation of the text. In addition, the contratenor is somewhat unusual in that it
presents several editorial problems. The places are marked with a cross in Ex. 2.1, partly
because it is difficult to think of a feasible emendation for any of them . This may be partly a
result of the garbled transmission witnessed by the state of the poem. But at the same time, thel
conjunction of very simple counterpoint in the main voices with an irresolvable crudeness in the 1
contratenor could well suggest that the piece is part of a tradition of semi-improvised polyphony I
in Spain, such as has also been suggested for fifteenth-century Italy, primarily by Nino Pirrotta. 29 j
That could explain the curious transmission history of Cornago's songs. It could also explain-
asTiCioes for Italy-the scarcity oltlie-polyphomc record-ascoinp arecf with the-copious surviVal
o!2~~!!X that s~~ms ~Q_ave b ~_~n -m~~~-I~~~~u_s_i~_· -------- ·-------·--------------- -·- - ---- ... ·

Pues servicio vos desplaze

The song "Pues servicio vos desplaze" (Ex. 2.2) appears without text but with an ascription
to Robert Morton in the Perugia chansonnier 431, copied in the kingdom of Naples some
time in the last decade of the fifteenth century. 30 In CMP it appears with the Castilian text
in the example, with an extra contratenor line added in a later hand, and with an ascription to
"Enrrique."31 This ascription is faintly written and almost invisible on microfilms, as a result
of which it disappeared from the published literature in 1951, only to re-emerge in 1965,32

27 Allan W. Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 62-69.
28 It has often been observed that Cornago's earlier songs were several times given new contratenor voices by other
composers-see in particular Isabel Pope's essay "The Secular Compositions of Johannes Cornago" in Misceldnea
en homenaje a monseiior Higinio Angles, ed. Miguel Querol (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Cientificas, 1958-61), 2:689-706.
® See the articles reprinted in Nino Pirrotta, Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque:
A Collection of Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), especially pp. 51-159.
30 Perugia, Biblioteca comunale, 431, ff. 62v-63 [opening 72] (no . 40), ed. (with text added) by Al1an Atlas, Robert
Morton: The Collected Works, Masters and Monuments of the Renaissance, 2 (New York: Broude Brothers, 1981), 45.
For discussion of the manuscript, its provenance, and date, see Atlas, "On the Neapolitan Provenance of the Manuscript
Perugia, Biblioteca Comunale Augusta, 431 (020)," Musica Discip/ina 31 (1977): 45-105.
31 Ff. 17v-18 (no . 27), most recently edited in Atlas, Robert Morton, 47.
32 In MME 10 (Barcelona, 1951), p. 24 of the introduction, Angles stated specifically that the ascription was not
present in the manuscript and that his earlier mention of such an ascription had been "una distracci6n, que no sabemos
explicarnos." Romeu corrected him in MME 14 (Barcelona, 1965), 14, note 3, but not in his commentary on the
song (pp. 259-60). His correction, isolated in an enormous preface, was first drawn to my attention by Allan Atlas.
And since I shall be questioning several of Atlas's conclusions in the next paragraphs, I should state at this point
that I owe a tremendous debt to him, particularly for reviving my interest in Morton's music at a point when my
dissertation on the subject was at a difficult stage- a stage that every doctoral candidate must have experienced.
Ex. 2.2. [Enrique], "Pues servicio vos desplaze."

- I I
I ~

I
~
l.Pues ser- vi - cio vas des- pia ze I lo- ar vos
4. Es - to sien - to que vos pia ze : El do- !or que

"
... •
- .....,. u ..
I
;
I
Te nor ~ "' "' i
I I
-
I
""'
Contra
. I I I

"
10
-·
11 -
des-con-ten
......
ta,
I
Lo que m as
-, T
vas
"]

sa-t is - fa - ze
.,
-
vas sa-tis- I fa - ze .

-
m'a-tor -m en - ta. Sy mi fi n
r
1\ I
br"":: r-:-' I
~ • • -# • • ~

I
,..., ~ r-::1 I I
: -
I looOil

"
IS
--- *"- 20

~
Yo no sien- - to
- quien Jo
.....
si e n t a. 2. y
T
cones-
Yo no sien - - to quien lo sien - ta. 3. Pues a mi-
,.., b
" -I I l

~
-9 • • • \Y I
1""1 I
:
.. r -...- ...,

1\ 25 . #- - #-- •
-- -
~
tomi
-
sen - tir No sa be q u( m o - do si
""""iiiiliiiiii~
gu a.

~
-
mu·cho ser - vir

I
" I
V os mo s

I..! I
b
tra -d es e- n e

looiiil
DI b

I
mi
I I
-
gua.

,.........,
..
I I I I

I ... ..., I 1..1 I l..lt:i.J

 Spanish Polyphonic Song 27

When Manfred Bukofzer noted the identity of the Perugia piece (communicated to Angles in a
letter dated 23 November 1951), Angles added a last-minute note to the second volume of his
edition of CMP- a perplexed page of discussion trying to explain how an English composer at
the court of Burgundy should have been able to compose a song so firmly in the Spanish style. 33
The re-emergence of the ascription to Enrique should perhaps have resolved Angles's
problem, particularly in view of the manifest Spanish character of the music. But the Morton
ascription in Perugia had taken hold at precisely the time when Morton's importance as a
composer was being recognized. In his recent edition of Morton's works, Allan Atlas argued
that the original three-voice work must be a French chanson by Morton, despite its difference
from the style of his other songs, and indeed from the French song repertory of the time in
general. 34 In a very brief discussion, his main arguments were twofold. First, the Perugia
chansonnier contains a total of four pieces ascribed to Morton- though each one actually has
features that make the ascription seem highly dubious, and in each case the suspicious features
are different. 35 Second, Atlas argued that here, and in many other cases, an apparently
conflicting ascription canbe resolveatiys uggestlngt:liai thesecoii(f composer-sTmply aaaed
8oriu!ili1i:ig-.=Tnthls caseanextra voice and aSpanish text. Mo-reo"vef.TtTs'possibieto-addl
to Atlas's arguments tlie observat!OiiT at tlieascnpfion of the song to "Enrrique" in CMP l
I
<::; '

is in a later and lighter hand that looks remarkably similar to the one that added the fourth
'. voice. So in this respect his case looks even stronger than he himself made it. _,
But there are several considerations that return the song firmly to the Spanish repertory.
The first concerns the-text that Enrique is suppose to Iiaveadded toa"'F'rench- son:g.- rn CMP
that text is in the original scribal hand, not an addition. Moreover, the text appears elsewhere
in a context that marks it firmly as part of the Spanish song tradition in the late fifteenth
century. This is in Ms. 617 in Madrid, Biblioteca de Palacio. 36 It dates from the mid-sixteenth
century; but on f. 162v there is a heading, "Canciones viejas y nuevas," after which all but
two of the following twenty-two poems are known from musical settings in the earlier layers
'0 of CMC and CMP. That the poem "Pues servicio" appears here suggests that it had a fairly
0
\? solid place in the Spanish song repertory, rather than being i poem Simply tacKed on foa
,, ~ French piece by EllrTque:-NofOiily that, but ifTmnied1ately prece es one ort
e ofner two
LU poems knowntohave- been set by Enrique, "Pues con sobra detristura." 37_ _ _ _ _ _ _
,__ --Infa.ct, the theory-of a Spanish text having been added by-another hand] s one that has
- ·-· - .
~-------- ~-·---- ----- - - -----·-- ···-·· ___. ·-,.......-:: -- -
··· --- - __ ,. ~- - - -- -- - --· ---
-~- -·~·· ··-·-·- ·--· -
little to recommend it. Words and music fit superbly; in virtually all known cases of retexting
in the fifteenth century the musical evidence is easy to see. In the case of "Pues servicio,"
there is nothing to suggest that the music started with a different text, and the new evidence
of the Madrid poetry manuscript now supports that. That the music really is for a Spanish
cancion seems clear enough from its formal structure: a bergerette, for instance, would usually
have a change of metrical scheme for the second part; and the proportional lengths of the
two halves here correspond to those of several pieces in the Spanish repertory. The falling

33 MME 10 (Barcelona, 1951), 23-24.

34 Atlas, Robert Morton, 102-03.
35David Fallows, "Robert Morton's Songs: A Study of Styles in the Mid-Fifteenth Century" (Ph.D. diss., University
of California at Berkeley, 1978), 300-462.
36 A list of its contents appears in Dutton, Catdlogo-indice, 68-72; serious scholarly attention to the manuscript
apparently was drawn first by Dutton in "Spanish Fifteenth-Century cancioneros: A General Survey to 1465," Kentucky
Romance Quarterly 26 (1979): 446. There is now an edition by Jose J. Labrador, C. Angel Zorita, and Ralph DiFranco,
Cancionero de poesias varias, manuscrito no. 617 de la Biblioteca Real de Madrid (Madrid: El Crotal6n, 1986).
@ F. 164 (no. 118), where the poem is ascribed to Rodrigo de Ulloa. For Enrique's music, see note 41 below.
 28 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON EARLY MUSIC

dotted-note figures are to some extent characteristic of the Spanish song style; and, rather more
tentatively, the progression from shorter to longer lines in the first half is more common in the
Spanish repertory than the French, which so often does the reverse. Moreover, it may be worth ;,,
asking why just this song among the hundreds of French songs circulating at the time should!/
have been chosen for retexting into Spanish. It seems to me that whoever composed the musicl
did so for the Spanish text it carries in CMP.
This is not the place to repeat my earlier extended attempt to show that the music has
nothing to do with the other work of Morton or his circle. 38 But two details are worth repeating
and slightly expanding.
The first is biographical. Morton was permanently resident in the Burgundian court for
the years 1457-76. Paula Higgins has recently drawn attention to a document showing that
Morton resigned a prebend in the diocese of Utrecht on 13 March 1479, 39 which in turn adds
credibility to the lost document mentioned by Fetis40 attesting to Morton's continued presence
at the Burgundian court chapel in 1478 (for which no documents now survive). To have'\
composed in the style of "Pues servicio," he would need to have been in Spain. If he was J
there, it would need to have been after that date. ·
The second detail concerns the style of the two songs that are ascribed without contradiction
to Enrique (see Ex. 2.3). 41 They are in duple time, not the triple time of "Pues servicio.";
and they have other important differences, such as both have open cadences at the end of
the mudanza, whereas "Pues servicio" has a closed cadence on the home pitch. But the three
songs share much in their phrase structure, in melodic details (see for instance the dippin g
figure: fii ":Pue_
s_servfcio;·"-Ex: ·2~2~meas~- 8-, I2-i4, 18-19;.atid a(the end: in "Pues con sobra,"
Ex. 2.3a, especially in the last line; and in "Mi querer," Ex. 2.3b, meas. 4, 7, and elsewhere;
compare too the opening discantus line of "Pues servicio" with that of "Mi querer"), and
particularly the homophonic triad pattern that begins the second half of all three songs. These l
are all small matters, but enough to suggest that if the music of "Pues servicio" was really ,
by Morton, then Enrique was extremely fortunate to find a French or English piece so similar \
to his style that he could pass it off as his own. .)
Moreover, the poet of "Pues servicio" is probably Pere Torroella. 42 Atlas reminds us that
Torroella was much admired at the court of Naples, and mentions "evidence demonstrating that

38 Fallows, "Robert Morton's Songs," especially pp. 353-75.

39 Paula Higgins, "Antoine Busnois and Musical Culture in Late Fifteenth-Century France and Burgundy" (Ph.D.
diss., Princeton University, 1987), 122. SeeP. M. Grijpink, comp., Register op de parochien, altaren . . . van den
ojficiaal des aartsdiakens van den Utrechtschen Dom, 8 vols. (Amsterdam and Haarlem: C. L. van Langenhuysen,
1914-37), vol. 6 (ed . C. P . M. Holtkamp), 108, who in turn cites Utrecht, Rijks-archief, D.N. 670. Morton resigns
the parish of Goutswaard-Koorndijk in the diocese of Utrecht; and his successor is instituted on 13 March 1479
[new style]: "Institutio domini Johannis Gerardi ad ecclesiam de Corendijck, vac. p. lib. res. domini Roberti Morton,
ult. poss. 3 scuta 22 stuf. Act. 13 Martii." In an English document, such an entry could refer to several people,
but in the lands of the Duke of Burgundy the odds are very much in favor of the court chaplain.
40 Fran~tois-Joseph Fetis, Biographie universe/le des musiciens et bibliographie generale de la musique, 2nd (much
expanded) ed., 8 vols. (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1860-65}, s.v. "Morton." See, however, another possible interpretation
of Fetis's statement in Fallows, "Robert Morton's Songs," 275-77.
41 "Pues con so bra de tristura" appears in CMC, ff. 3v-5 (no. 2), four voices, anon., and in CMP, ff. lOv-11 (no .
16), three voices, ascribed to "Enrrique"; the fourth voice in CMC is a feeble and ungainly addition. "Mi querer
tanto vos quiere" appears in CMC, ff. 48v-49 (no. 30), four voices, anon ., and in CMP, ff. 19v-20 (no. 29), four
voices, "Enrrique." They are published in the editions of CMC and CMP (cited above in notes 1-2).
42 Montserrat, Monasterio, 992 (formerly in the private library of the Marques de Barbera y de la Manresana, Barcelona),
f. 22v (no. 16). See descriptions of the manuscript in Mariano Baselga y Ramirez, El cancionero catallin de la Universidad
de Zaragoza (Zaragoza: C. Gasca, 1896), 393-99, and (for the Castilian poetry only) Dutton, Catdlogo-indice, 2-3 . It
 Spanish Polyphonic Song 29

Torroella was actually at the court in Naples circa 1456-circa 1458"; 43 if a Spanish poem were
being sought in Naples to add to the French song of Robert Morton, it is clear that Torroella
would be one of the possible poets. But there is more information about the life of Torroella.
In particular, he was one of the closest courtiers of the poetry-loving Carlos, Prince of Viana,
from 1438 until that prince's early death in 1461; and in the prince's will he was bequeathed
195 books. 44 (Subsequently he entered the service of King Juan II, remaining there until at
least 1470.) Moreover, while not denying the evidence that Torroella's poetry was known
and admired hi-Naples;-If isworffi-noiiiig ih-af111s-presence-fnNapies was-for-on1y]ust'over
a year:--ile arrived with Prince Carlos on 20 March 1457 ari(fdeparted with htm hu rriedly
onthe night of 4-5 July 1458 when Carlos had to escape in the wake of a fruitless attempt
to proclaim him king in place of the unpopular Ferrante. 45 Moreover, the single fifteenth-
century poetic source of "Pues servicio" is a Catalan manuscript very closely connected to
the circle of Carlos of Viana, including as it does some writings of the prince himself, as
well as poetry by Torroella, Juan de Mena, and several writers in Catalan. 46
As coincidence would have it, the composer Enrique also received books from Prince
Carlos's estate- "duo libros cant us, quos ego composueram"; and, like Torroella, he then
went into the service of King Juan until the latter's death in 1479. 48 In any discussion of\I
who composed the music, it is difficult to ignore this information: one source gives the name i
of the composer; another gives the name of the poet, or at least the literary context; a set !
of documents tells us that the two men worked together at a relatively small court, and the I
words fit the music so well as to discourage any suggestion that they were grafted together. In ,
these circumstances, it seems perverse to suggest that Enrique was not the original composer i
of Torroella's text. _)
Atlas's theory has the merit of being based on the important general principle that
conflicting ascriptions should not necessarlly lead "to t he lnevl"i:abfe -conCiu-sion ..tha£one- or
-ofileilSWroiig·.49 --A.iict in this-case ffeacHiyidiiDFthath.1s-argument expTainswhy .there shouia·
have been an ascription of the piece to Morton in the Perugia manuscript, whereas I can offer
none beyond the plainly visible evidence that the scribe was ignorant and unskilled, besides
ascribing to Morton three further pieces that for their various reasons are hardly likely to
be by him while failing to add Morton's name to his most successful work, "Le souvenir."

should be added that this poem appears anonymously, and is attributed by Baselga on the basis of its position after
a group of poems specifically ascribed to Torroella; see also Pedro Bach y Rita, The Works of Pere Torroella: A
Catalan Writer of the Fifteenth Century (New York: Instituto de !as Espaiias en los Estados Unidos, 1930), 250.
Dutton, on the other hand, is implicitly cautious about the attribution (see his Cattilogo-indice, "Maestro," no. 1771).
43 Atlas, Robert Morton, 102-03.
44 Aubrun, xlv-li; Jose Maria Azaceta, ed., Cancionero de Juan Ferndndez de Ixar (Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Cientfficas, 1956), lxii.
45 Eugenio Mele, "Qualque nuovo data sulla vita di Mossim Pere Toroella e suoi rapporti con Giovanni Pontano,"
La rinascitii 1 (1938): 85-90.
46 See note 42.
47 Higinio Angles, Historia de la musica medieval en Navarra, 405 .
48 Angles, ibid. A recent summary of Enrique's life, with some new documentation, appears in Tessa W. Knight on,
"Music and Musicians at the Court of Fernando of Aragon, 1474-1516" (Ph.D. diss ., University of Cambridge, 1983),
266.
49 The methodology is explained in Allan W. Atlas, "Conflicting Attributions in Italian Sources of the Franco-
Netherlandish Chanson, c.1465-c.1505: A Progress Report on a New Hypothesis," in lain Fenlon, ed., Music in
Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),
249-93.
Ex. 2.3a. Enrique, "Pues con sobra la tristura."

TV 0
j J. J j J jj_n
I I iiiil[
~ I I I I VI I I lJ I I I
Pues con sobra la tristura [etc.]
b b
:
I I I I
r I l I

____ Jj I I J
1,.1 I I I I

I I I I

Vos fu- is - tes la ven ce - do ra. [ etc.li

 Ex. 2.3b. Enrique, "Mi querer tanto vos quiere."

n; I J I I I l 1 _b Dl l
~

Mi
r I
que -
I
rer
vr -
tanto
r r
vos
r
qui ere [etc.]
I I I 1

I I r- I -I I
I

' ~
s

I
I

r
,.
J.
r
i
I
1 11
I I
I J

r VI
_t_l J-~J1 I
I I I I
lw

:
I I
I I I I I I

~J1 J1i I b. I I I I 2s I I J 1-
I~
'-'U I r u
r r r I - I I I I
~

Tan - to soys de mi querida [etc .]

:
I
I I I I, r I I I I

" ,. . . rJ j'F; I ~ I J. J I I I I 30 I. ~ I

~
( ~ r r
u
I I I I I I

:
I I
I I I I I I
 32 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON EARLY MUSIC

But then many isolated features of the early sources are difficult to explain; and it is
in any case worth suspecting an explanation that requires us to overlook the evidence of the
text, the evidence of musical style, and the evidence of the available biogtaphical information
about the three protagonists in this little drama. In particular, it seems virtually impossible
to believe that the music could have begun life with a non-Spanish text. Apart from the Perugia
ascription, all the available evidence points to Enrique as the composer. Given that Prince
Carlos's household was disbanded at his death, there seems a good case for believing that
the song came from the days when the poet and composer were all known to have been together,
namely before 1461. Consideration of the next song should help to put that possibility
into context.
But one final point should be made about Enrique. In the list of the late Prince Carlos's
chapel made at Barcelona on 30 December 1462, he is named "Enricus de Paris"; and again
on the acquisition of a chaplaincy at Santa Maria del Pi at Barcelona in 1475 he appears
as "Enric de Paris, cantor de la capella del rei d'Arag6." 50 Plainly, he was not a Spaniard,
any more than the most wonderful song composer of the next generation, Johannes Urrede
(Wreede) of Bruges. 51 Both composed songs that stand at a considerable distance, stylistically,
fi( from the enormous French song repertory of the time. How and why their styles evolved
\_\ as they did leads to questions far beyond the scope of this paper. But the information that
yet another non-Spaniarc:Chas an important ..position.Tii-·t11eearliest Spanish song repertory
as we now know it stresses the Franco-Spanish roots of the genre. It may even be possible
to argue that these men were instrumental in the evolution from a predominantly unnotated
semi-improvised repertory towards the glorious flowering of Spanish song during the last
quarter of the fifteenth century, as witnessed by CMC and CMP.

Viva, viva rey Ferrando

This four-voice work appears with text (though without a vuelta) in the Montecassino Ms.
871, currently dated in the 1480s.SZ In 1973 Peter Reidemeister was the first to identify an
untexted source of the music in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett chansonnier 78 C 28. 53 And
at the same time he dated that manuscript to 1465 on account of its heraldry. 54 As he observed,
the date is strictly just a terminus ante quem non, but consideration of probabilities and of
the remaining repertory there supports his argument.

50 Angles, Historia de la musica medieval en Navarra, 405.

5t Isabel Pope gives the main biographical information on Urrede in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, s.v. "Urreda." To this can now be added the new information in Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval
Bruges (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 43, 189-90. Strohm finds evidence of Johannes de Wreede (son of the
organist Rolandus Wreede) at Bruges in 1457-60, and concludes that he left for Spain at this point, though the earliest
Spanish documentation for him is at the household of the first Duke of A1va in 1476.
52 Montecassino, Biblioteca dell' Abbazia, 871, pp. 393-94 (no . 111), ed. Pope and Kanazawa, Manuscript
Montecassino, 442, and in Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples, 163.
53 Ff. 37v-39 (no. 34), ed. Peter Reidemeister, Die Chanson-Handschrift 78 C 28 des Berliner Kupferstichkabinetts:
Studien zur Form der Chanson im 15. Jahrhundert, Berliner Musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, 4 (Munich: E.
Katzbichler, 1973), no. 34. For further discussion on this manuscript, see Allan W. Atlas, "La provenienza del
manoscritto Berlin 78.C.28: Firenze o Napoli? ," Rivista italiana di musicologia 13 (1978): 10-29.
54 Reidemeister, 12-18.

-- ~
 Spanish Polyphonic Song 33

Unfortunately Reidemeister also noted that the initial letters for the song- which are
the only remnants of text to survive in Berlin-are different from those of the "Viva, viva"
text. 55 Since this manuscript was evidently so much earlier than Montecassino, he suggested
that the Spanish text was a contrafactum, and subsequent writers have accepted his view. 56 He
offered two pieces of evidence.
First, that the two sources had important rhythmic differences which seemed to him better
in the untexted Berlin version; Ex. 2.4 shows the relevant sections with the differences noted.
At the beginning the imitation pattern, carried on into two contratenors, surely in fact favors
the Montecassino version as the original, not the Berlin. And the passage at the beginning
of the mudanza may be less conclusive but at least contains nothing to support Reidemeister's
theory that Montecassino is the adjusted source.
Reidemeister's second piece of evidence needs to be seen in the context of the Enrique songs
in Ex. 2.3. He says that a mudanza beginning, like that of the Montecassino version, with
longa-brevis-brevis-brevis is not imaginable as an Originaljassung. Yet Enrique does almost the j'
same thing in all three songs in Exx. 2.2 and 2.3. It also appears elsewhere in the early Spanish / i
repertory and could even- albeit with heavy qualifications- be considered a characteristic of!i
Spanish song style at the time.
Surely, then, the simple explanation is that "Viva, viva" is indeed a Spanish song, copied
into the Berlin manuscript with the expectation of receiving a text less cfoseiYassociated with the -
particufareventior which itwascomposecfFerrante became king in 1 458, -so tile- songm u-st \
nave been composeaoetween t en and 1465 when it was copied into the Berlin source. To )
restore this work, with its relatively precise early date, to the Spanish repertory is to see certain
things in a different perspective.
Most important, "Viva, viva" is clearly a four-voice song from which no voice can sensibly
be omitted: discantus and tenor have extended simultaneous rests during which both the contra-
tenor lines are structurally necessary. This is actually most unusual in the song repertory of
those years. There is, for example, only one other four-voice piece among the forty-two songs
in the Berlin manuscript. 57 Perhaps this point should be clarified. Four-voice polyphony
had been common since the thirteenth century, of course; but in the years between 1420 and
1490 its appearances in the secular song repertory are almost all in four categories: canonic
works, 58 combinative chansons with several texts, 59 works containing hints of motet style, 60

55 Namely "S" and "D" in place of the expected "V" and "V."
56 Reidemeister, 104-05; Pope and Kanazawa , Manuscript Montecassino, 640; and Atlas, Music at the Aragonese
Court of Naples, 119.
57 Ff. 45v-47 (no. 40), ed. Reidemeister, Die Chanson-Handschrift, appendix. This is, incidentally, an extremely
strange song in a bergerettelcancion form that might well have something to do with the early history of the
Spanish tradition. (Like all but one of the works in this manuscript, it has no text but the initial letters "B"
and "N.") Here the fourth voice is entirely dispensable, though it is composed with the most consummate mastery,
as is the rest of the song.
58 See for example Dufay's "Par droit je puis bien complaindre et gernir" and his considerably later "Les douleurs dont
me sens tel somme"- the latter not recognized as such in the Du fay complete edition but correctly transcribed in Charles
Hamm's review in Musical Quarterly 52 (1966): 252.
59 First described and defined in Maria Rika Maniates, "Combinative Chansons in the Dijon Chansonnier," Journal
of the American Musicological Society 23 (1970): 228-81.
60 For example, Ockeghem's lament at the death of Binchois, "Mort tu as navre de ton dueil," ed. Pope and Kanazawa,
Manuscript Montecassino, 427, and the anonymous "Resjois toi terre de France," Manuscript Montecassino, 391.
Ex. 2.4. "Viva, viva Rey Ferrando."

_/\ I
,..,
u r r
Vi-va, vi - va Rey F erran do
J
"
0 J

~
Vi -va, vi - va Rey Ferran
I J J J. ~ I I I
"
~

131----. ,--- 3 - . r- 3-.

"
tJ I I
es.

fl I

~ r I I
do es.

fl I ) J I ~ I I I I I I _l

~ I I I Pf r rr r 1 br r
" I _]

u I

Va - gan to das lu mj - na

"
~
Va gan to das [ lu - mi na
J. ~ I ]l
" --- I I I

~ I I I
r r
" I ~

u I

ria

' " I

I I I
11 I
ria lb
j I ~ I I l J
" \ \ 1

p I
~ I I
i r I V

-. =
 Spanish Polyphonic Song 35

and three-voice songs with added voice. "Viva, viva" falls into none of these categories; all .
four voices are necessary. In the other early Spanish song, the romance "Lealtat, o lealtat"
of 1466 (Ex. 2.5), the matter is not so clear; but its textures do seem to suggest four-voice
conception: without the upper contratenor there would be some extremely bare consonances.
This too is surprisingly early for a four -voice song outside the genres named above. --

Ex. 2.5. "Lealtat, o lealtat," from Madrid, Biblioteca nacional, Ms. 2092, ff. 249v-250.

Disc. I I I ) I I J Ji j
" I
""
I I I
Ten. ~ I...JI
Le - al - tat, 0 le - a! - tat .

CtA. J J I ) I I 1 1 1 "'
CtB. I I
r I
T r I

11 j j J J I Tl 5 I } I I J i1 I I I

~ I I I I I I I I VT I 7~
Le - a!- tat , di-me , do st as?

I I J I 1- I I J I _d ~ J I
:
I I I- r----r ~ I I r T

JJJ J I · I I 10 ~ 1 I J I I I I J
! l
I I I I I I I I ~~ <"'l I~

Ve-te, rey, a! con - de - sta - - ble

11 .o. J J f'11 I 1 J J. ~I I I I
:
I I I I..J r ( I I 1 I I

"' I I I I I J 15 J. J I ~ I J I I
,.I

I I I

el
I I
I I 1-pl Tl l r u
y en I la fa - - - lla - riis.

I ~ I I I JJ_d j Jj J I JJ J
:
I I I I I I I r v 1 -FT jl T
 -·
'i

36 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON EARLY MUSIC

Yet another four-voice Spanish song appears in an Italian manuscript that has been dated
with some confidence since the fifteenth-century Spanish repertory was last appraised in print,
namely Vincenet's "La pena sin ser sabida" in the Mellon Chansonnier, now dated around
1475. 61 Four-voice songs are not as rare in the Mellon as they are in the Berlin manuscript
of a decade earlier; but they are still unusual. 62
Returning now to the two Enrique pieces in Ex. 2.3, it is worth noting that both actually
appemn-four voices, though I feftout the upper-contratenorin the -eximpies for--reasons
of clarity and to facilitate comparison with "Pues servicio"; also, Ex. 2.3a does appear in
only three voices in one of its sources. But to look at Ex. 2.3b in this context is surely to
see clearly that there is a large number of open octaves, open fifths, and unusually widely
spread textures. I believe that this is also a four-voice conception.
On the other hand, "Pues servicio" is firmly a three-voice piece. As it stands, it hasl l
ext~emely rich text~res throughout- often too ~ich- and t~e ad~~d fourth voice in CMP ~s I \
a dismally cobbled JOb. Yet the very fullness of Its three-vmce wntmg suggests that the music 1:
belongs to a world that favored rich textures, namely- to judge from the other piecesj \
mentioned here-the Spanish repertory of the years 1450-70. -'
Another notable feature of this reconstituted early Spanish repertory is mensuration.
"Lealtat," "Viva, viva," and "Pues con sobra la tristura" all use 4: mensuration with a musical
pulse that makes it generally possible to bar the music in groups of three breves: 3/2 time
in the quartered note-values of these transcriptions. (And one reason for presenting again
the entire "Lealtat" is that with such barring the music seems to make more sense than it
does in the received transcriptions.) That pattern is hardly limited to Spanish music of the
time; but it does seem to have been something of a fashion in the early years of the repertory,
and it could offer clues towards believing that CMP contains more really early pieces than
the slightly earlier CMC. _
In summary, then: "Viva, viva" comes back to the Spanish repertory, now firmly datablel
between 1458 and 1465, and gives hints that the four-voice song style was favored in Spain !
at a time when it was avoided elsewhere; "Pues servicio" is Spanish and seems slightly earlier,
perhaps before 1461, in which context the two other songs of Enrique represent a natural
stylistic development of the 1460s; "La gracia de vos" may well be the earliest of the lot,
certainly before 1463, offering strong evidence of a semi-improvised song tradition in fifteenth- ,
century Spain; and the alphabetic poem "En A vila por la A" suggests that there is a substantial i
lost repertory of Spanish secular polyphony from the 1450s. .!

61 See above, note 7. It is also edited, with various solutions to the musical and formal difficulties, in Bertran E . Davis,
The Collected Works of Vincenet, Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, 9-10
(Madison: A-R Editions, 1978), 159, and in Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples, 215 (see also pp . 141-42
for Atlas's discussion).
62 Of the fifty-seven songs in the Mellon Chansonnier, nine are in four voices. Two of these are combinative chansons
(nos. 4 and 28); three definitely include added voices (nos . 16, 24, and 50), two almost certainly so, though there are no
other sources to offer evidence (nos. 43 and 48); and the only other four -voice song, apart from "La pena," is Regis's
totally perplexing "Puisque ma damme/Je m'en voy" (no. 11).